Bharti Airtel has added two new products to its ‘Mera Pehla Smartphone’ initiative, and also extended its partnership with domestic brand Karbonn. The two smartphones are Karbonn A1 Indian 4G and Karbonn A41 Power. These smartphones are effectively priced at Rs. 1,799 and Rs. 1,849 respectively. Airtel's 'Mera Pehla Smartphone' initiative is aimed at delivering a 4G smartphone at the price of a feature phone.
Both the Karbonn A1 Indian and A41 Power boasts of similar specifications, but the latter offers a bigger battery. They both flaunt a 4-inch WVGA display and boots Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box. The best part is both the smartphones are Airtel VoLTE enabled, and also comes with other connectivity options such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and a micro USB port for charging and data transfer.
The A1 Indian is powered by an unspecified 1.1GHz quad-core processor, whereas the A41 Power is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core chipset of unknown make. They both offer 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage that can be expanded up to 32GB with a microSD card. The A1 Indian rocks a 3.2MP camera at the back and a 2MP front-facing camera, while the A41 Power comes with a 2MP rear camera and a 0.3MP selfie camera.
Another best part of both the phones is that the dual SIM slots are open to any network. Airtel has bundled the smartphones with its digital suite of applications such as My Airtel, Airtel TV, and Wynk Music.
That said, both the newly announced smartphones come bundled with a monthly pack of Rs. 169 from Airtel that offers 500MB data per day and unlimited voice calls for 28 days. So far, Airtel has launched two smartphones under the ‘Mera Pehla Smartphone’ scheme- the Karbonn A40 Indian and the Celkon Smart 4G.
Airtel also stated that the A40 Indian was fully sold out within the first month of launch. Also, the smartphones under the Airtel-Karbonn partnership will also be available on Amazon India. The Karbonn A40 India will be available starting today, whereas the A1 Indian and A41 Power will be available starting next week.
Coming to the pricing department, for the A1 Indian 4G smartphone, customers need to make a down payment of Rs. 3,299 and for the A41 Power 4G smartphone, the effective price is Rs. 3,349. Like earlier, customers need to make 36 continuous monthly recharges of Rs. 169 pack from Airtel. The customer will get a cash refund of Rs. 500 after 18 months and another Rs. 1000 after 36 months, taking the total cash benefit to Rs. 1500.
Furthermore, in case the customer does not want to recharge with the Rs. 169 bundled plan, he has the flexibility of doing recharges of any denomination and validity as per individual requirements. However, to claim the cash refund benefit recharges worth Rs. 3000 must be done within the first 18 months (to claim the first refund instalment of Rs. 500) and another Rs. 3000 over the next 18 months (to claim the second refund instalment of Rs. 1000).
The ownership of the smartphone is completely with the customer and there is no need to return the device to Airtel/Karbonn at any point to claim the cash benefit.
